Police chief said Uber victim “came from the shadows”—don’t believe it

This just shows that humans can't be trusted as instant backup for a near fully autonomous car.

And I agree, that Uber footage must be purposely dark. If they weren't worried, they'd be showing us footage from the other sensors as well.

They can if they are actually watching the road. Uber's safety passenger was staring at their phone rather than watching the street.

Even if you are actively watching the road how effective could you really be? The car is supposed to be driving itself. You have to judge if it is going to make a decision that will cause a collision. That is often going to take up time that you'd need in order to avoid it.

I think it was mentioned that Waymo's cars give a readout of some kind? Certainly any AV that is being tested should have indicators of the car's intentions for the safety driver. Though keeping track of that information might be a distraction.

I drive a car with active cruise control that is guided only by cameras (2016 Subaru Impreza w/ Eyesight). One thing the car does that is pretty interesting is that the automatic emergency braking and the active cruise control operate independently. So even in autonomous follow mode, the car will still give a warning of flashing red on the dashboard and a loud beep if it senses an obstruction that it feels the car is not already braking hard enough for. This lets the driver push the brake pedal harder if they feel it is required.

I'd like to see how those pedways in the median are supposed to be accessed without "jaywalking".

jaywalking is going from oppoaite corner to corner at an intersection, not following the crosswalks that run parallel to the streets. crossing anywhere other than a crosswalk is not jaywalking.

Crossing the road illegally is jaywalking. So 99% of the time, if there is no crosswalk, it is jaywalking.

It's not just as simple as a crosswalk because most states have the concept of an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection which doesn't have signals (otherwise there'd be huge parts of the country where nobody could cross the street without a multi-mile hike):

Arizona: Vehicles must yield the right-of-way to pedestrians within a crosswalk that are in the same half of the roadway as the vehicle or when a pedestrian is approaching closely enough from the opposite side of the roadway to constitute a danger. Pedestrians may not suddenly leave the curb and enter a crosswalk into the path of a moving vehicle that is so close the vehicle is unable to yield. Pedestrians must yield the right-of-way to vehicles when crossing outside of a marked crosswalk or an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection. Where traffic control devices are in operation, pedestrians may only cross between two adjacent intersections in a marked crosswalk.

I'd like to see how those pedways in the median are supposed to be accessed without "jaywalking".

Was the person even jaywalking? From the overhead view in the promoted comment, there are paths that go right up to the street, right where the accident took place. I don't know if you are supposed to cross there, but I am wondering if the white sign is a "watch for pedestrians" one. I can't quite make it out at 0:33 in the video, which is in the area of the accident.

Yes she was jaywalking. There is no legal crossing there. The paths are actually emergency bypass roads used for when one of the sides of the highway is flooded.

Really? They make emergency use only bypass roads out of pinkish gravel with pretty curves that match the nearby theater? Seems kind of weird.

I'd like to see how those pedways in the median are supposed to be accessed without "jaywalking".

Was the person even jaywalking? From the overhead view in the promoted comment, there are paths that go right up to the street, right where the accident took place. I don't know if you are supposed to cross there, but I am wondering if the white sign is a "watch for pedestrians" one. I can't quite make it out at 0:33 in the video, which is in the area of the accident.

Yes she was jaywalking. There is no legal crossing there. The paths are actually emergency bypass roads used for when one of the sides of the highway is flooded.

She was probably jaywalking but not because of the reason you think. See my above post...

I'd like to see how those pedways in the median are supposed to be accessed without "jaywalking".

jaywalking is going from oppoaite corner to corner at an intersection, not following the crosswalks that run parallel to the streets. crossing anywhere other than a crosswalk is not jaywalking.

Crossing the road illegally is jaywalking. So 99% of the time, if there is no crosswalk, it is jaywalking.

It's not just as simple as a crosswalk because most states have the concept of an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection which doesn't have signals (otherwise there'd be huge parts of the country where nobody could cross the street without a multi-mile hike):

Arizona: Vehicles must yield the right-of-way to pedestrians within a crosswalk that are in the same half of the roadway as the vehicle or when a pedestrian is approaching closely enough from the opposite side of the roadway to constitute a danger. Pedestrians may not suddenly leave the curb and enter a crosswalk into the path of a moving vehicle that is so close the vehicle is unable to yield. Pedestrians must yield the right-of-way to vehicles when crossing outside of a marked crosswalk or an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection. Where traffic control devices are in operation, pedestrians may only cross between two adjacent intersections in a marked crosswalk.

Hence the 99% of the time.

Edit: I knew there were outliers. But for the most part the average person won't encounter those.

so who gets charged with vehicular manslaughter? the car? uber? or someone who believed the lie that they are safe?

I would say the driver is responsible and in this case, the car was the driver.

but the car cannot have responsibility as it operates under specific rules and under the design specifications of ubers engineers. so there are a whole team. of people responsible for driving that car. the "driver" ie meatbag behind the wheel, doesn't have to do anything, and will likely lose attention when not engaged in driving. its like watching someone who drives an automatic vs a manual, more mental engagement = closer attention to what you are supposed to be doing.

This seems like a fundamentally hard problem to solve. Pedestrians often walk toward a road, for example if they’re intending to cross. From a code perspective, you’d likely get a ton of false positives with the car slamming on the brakes whenever a pedestrian walked up the kerb.

It is the vehicle’s right of way, after all (?)

Identifying whether the object or pedestrian is on a pavement or parallel path, and then deciding whether to take evasive action strikes me as a hard problem, but the basic assumption would be that the person wasn’t about to step into the path of the vehicle.

Still, you’d expect the car to slow down in noisy or uncertain environments.

I doubt the system really cares if the pedestrian is in a crosswalk or not. In the case here, she was already in the road and in front of the car when it hit her, ie crossing. Regardless of the lighting conditions (which look like an alert driver would have easily been able to see her from a distance), the LIDAR and Radar should have been able to detect her well in time to slow down/stop.

Not having access to the sensor data I can't say for sure, but it does seem as though something went wrong.

I'd like to see how those pedways in the median are supposed to be accessed without "jaywalking".

Was the person even jaywalking? From the overhead view in the promoted comment, there are paths that go right up to the street, right where the accident took place. I don't know if you are supposed to cross there, but I am wondering if the white sign is a "watch for pedestrians" one. I can't quite make it out at 0:33 in the video, which is in the area of the accident.

There is a crosswalk not far from there, but on the left side where the pedestrian was coming from, there is no sidewalk leading to said crosswalk. There is no legal crossing where the accident occurred. The paved median where she came from looks to be intended for cars, not people.

Comparing video from multiple uncalibrated cameras in different lighting conditions and then trying to extrapolate what a person could or couldn't see is pointless - there are far to many unknowns to reach any conclusion.

What would be interesting to see is the sensor data from the self-driving system. Was there not enough data to detect the woman crossing the road, did the machine vision fail to detect her, or was there some other failure?

When I first heard, it sounded like the pedestrian had walked out from the outer lane and could have been hidden by a post or something. But if they were walking across several lanes in this kind of road then it doesn't seem possible that the LIDAR could have reasonably missed it.

I think Uber is at fault here, and should have some serious penalties.

None of the self-driving companies (the ones with real test products on the road) are using LIDAR even Musk won't use it as it's to expensive. At best Uber is using the same Logitech webcams you have at home.

Yes she was jaywalking. There is no legal crossing there. The paths are actually emergency bypass roads used for when one of the sides of the highway is flooded.

Really? They make emergency use only bypass roads out of pinkish gravel with pretty curves that match the nearby theater? Seems kind of weird.

One of the two bridges is about sixty years older than the other. For decades, two northbound lanes crossed the dry riverbed, and two southbound lanes crossed the lone bridge. When the river flooded (pretty rare, less than yearly), they'd shift to one southbound lane and one northbound lane on the bridge.

Here's a picture from the 1980 flood, standing on the northbound lanes, looking southbound.

I assume that way back when, the bypass lanes were boring old asphalt, and have since been beautified since they're no longer generally needed (but were kept clear in case one bridge went out of service).

I'd like to see how those pedways in the median are supposed to be accessed without "jaywalking".

Was the person even jaywalking? From the overhead view in the promoted comment, there are paths that go right up to the street, right where the accident took place. I don't know if you are supposed to cross there, but I am wondering if the white sign is a "watch for pedestrians" one. I can't quite make it out at 0:33 in the video, which is in the area of the accident.

I'm sure anyone who lives in this area will attest, especially when you are used to the city lights.

I lived in the area for four years. I ran from campus up towards the zoo, at night, nearly every night for several years. I will attest to the opposite.

It is impossible for an attentive driver to fail to see a human-sized obstacle on that stretch of Mill Avenue.

Ya, but this misses the point a little. The question shouldn't be "Was she visible" but rather, "Was it rational for her to cross at that point in time when a car was obviously approaching her". The answer to my rhetorical question is of course no. Regardless of the law of who has the right of way, the law of self preservation means the pedestrian always has to assume the car will NOT stop. The problems arise when pedestrians do the opposite.

Comparing video from multiple uncalibrated cameras in different lighting conditions and then trying to extrapolate what a person could or couldn't see is pointless - there are far to many unknowns to reach any conclusion.

What would be interesting to see is the sensor data from the self-driving system. Was there not enough data to detect the woman crossing the road, did the machine vision fail to detect her, or was there some other failure?

I presume the reason there are so many independent videos showing up around the same time is because the local population, familiar with the location, thought "WTF?!? it's not that dark there and I'll show so".

so who gets charged with vehicular manslaughter? the car? uber? or someone who believed the lie that they are safe?

I would say the driver is responsible and in this case, the car was the driver.

but the car cannot have responsibility as it operates under specific rules and under the design specifications of ubers engineers. so there are a whole team. of people responsible for driving that car. the "driver" ie meatbag behind the wheel, doesn't have to do anything, and will likely lose attention when not engaged in driving. its like watching someone who drives an automatic vs a manual, more mental engagement = closer attention to what you are supposed to be doing.

I see your point. So do we blame the engineers, or some manager, or executive, or Uber itself? Interesting.

y'know, I can kind of sympathize with Uber and the "safety" driver in this situation. I don't know how many times I was lucky to see a pedestrian/cyclist at the last second because the idiots were wearing all black in an unlit or poorly-lit area.

How stupid do you have to be to wear all black in those places and expect anyone to see you?

'course, in most cases they looked to be around 20 or younger, so I guess that stupid.

I'm sure anyone who lives in this area will attest, especially when you are used to the city lights.

I lived in the area for four years. I ran from campus up towards the zoo, at night, nearly every night for several years. I will attest to the opposite.

It is impossible for an attentive driver to fail to see a human-sized obstacle on that stretch of Mill Avenue.

Ya, but this misses the point a little. The question shouldn't be "Was she visible" but rather, "Was it rational for her to cross at that point in time when a car was obviously approaching her". The answer to my rhetorical question is of course no. Regardless of the law of who has the right of way, the law of self preservation means the pedestrian always has to assume the car will NOT stop. The problems arise when pedestrians do the opposite.

As anyone who drives a car can attest, just because it's illegal or someone shouldn't be doing something, doesn't mean they won't. Pedestrians will jaywalk. Cars will run lights and stop signs. People will just slam on their breaks for no apparent reason.Those are things human drivers learn to deal with. They're also things AV need to learn to expect and prepare for.

But in this situation where someone is in the middle of the road. As someone pointed out, that should be AV 101: Don't hit solid objects in the middle of the road.

I'd like to see how those pedways in the median are supposed to be accessed without "jaywalking".

jaywalking is going from oppoaite corner to corner at an intersection, not following the crosswalks that run parallel to the streets. crossing anywhere other than a crosswalk is not jaywalking.

Don't make universal statements like that you are almost always going to be wrong in a country like the US where there are countless different state and local definitions.

In fact you are wrong. In AZ crossing the street not at a crosswalk is jaywalking.

like to see pedestrians walk miles and miles extra every day just to cross at cross walks. and jaywalking was named directly after the shape it makes when you cross an intersection like this.

don't make ignorant statements that assume every person that ever crossed a road is a criminal. dip shit.

i rarely ever see anyone cross in a crosswalk because all of the idiots i see in cars don't know what the fuck a stop line is or how to use it so there is literally no way for a pedestrian to cross the street legally because cars are parked on the cross walk.

you seem to have a hard time applying common sense and logic to something as simple AS WALKING. good job.

While I'm no fan of Uber, I don't know if the comparison videos are strictly accurate. The day of the crash, Sunday the 18th, the moon was a waxing crescent with only 1% illumination. The prior day, Saturday, it was a new moon with zero illumination. I don't have data on when the accident was (2am Sunday morning may be considered Saturday night for the lunar calendar?) but maybe someone can help.

By Wednesday illumination was up to 17%. It seems that Uber's camera was probably poorly configured also, but I don't think the ambient illumination level can be ignored.

I only mention it because I remember how important the lunar cycle was when I was deployed overseas. When we were in the desert we couldn't use any lights due to the threat of mortar attacks. When there was no moon you couldn't see much more than a foot around you. Night Vision even hard a hard time because there was so little ambient light to amplify. Even if there was a little bit of moon it would reflect off the sand and surfaces and you could get around so much better.

To me, the sky in the Uber video looks how I remember when there is almost no moon. But that's not particularly scientific. I can't find any comparison shots of lunar cycles with the same camera to see if there is a better answer.

Either way, it's still bad news. LIDAR and RADAR shouldn't be affected by illumination, and that's the real scandal.

Why all of the sudden are lots of new posters bringing up the phase of the moon, like that has any importance on a lit city street, AND it was after moonset when the comparison video was taken anyway? It's like this is a talking point being pushed out. I don't like having to be paranoid like this, but it seems to be what the world is like now.

This just shows that humans can't be trusted as instant backup for a near fully autonomous car.

The uber video proves *that* guy cannot serve as a backup. He was constantly looking down, probably checking his cell. The guy should have been with his eyes on the road the entire time. He probably wasn't even with his hands on the wheel.

EDIT:The videos here are orders of magnitude better than Uber's. I am wondering if Uber didn't darken the video on purpose to make their case more believable. I wouldn't put it past them to do this

This just shows that humans can't be trusted as instant backup for a near fully autonomous car.

And I agree, that Uber footage must be purposely dark. If they weren't worried, they'd be showing us footage from the other sensors as well.

They can if they are actually watching the road.

No, human backups really cant be trusted to react in time.

Quote:

from NY TimesBut Google decided to play down the vigilant-human approach after an experiment in 2013, when the company let some of its employees sit behind the wheel of the self-driving cars on their daily commutes. Engineers using onboard video cameras to remotely monitor the results were alarmed by what they observed — a range of distracted-driving behavior that included falling asleep. “We saw stuff that made us a little nervous,” Christopher Urmson, a former Carnegie Mellon University roboticist who directs the car project at Google, said at the time. The experiment convinced the engineers that it might not be possible to have a human driver quickly snap back to “situational awareness,” the reflexive response required for a person to handle a split-second crisis.

y'know, I can kind of sympathize with Uber and the "safety" driver in this situation. I don't know how many times I was lucky to see a pedestrian/cyclist at the last second because the idiots were wearing all black in an unlit or poorly-lit area.

How stupid do you have to be to wear all black in those places and expect anyone to see you?

'course, in most cases they looked to be around 20 or younger, so I guess that stupid.

The larger problem is with pedestrians who just expect cars to stop for them when they step out onto the street no matter where they are attempting to cross. It's so bad in Pico Rivera, CA that they build huge fences in the median to prevent people from doing it.

I'd like to see how those pedways in the median are supposed to be accessed without "jaywalking".

jaywalking is going from oppoaite corner to corner at an intersection, not following the crosswalks that run parallel to the streets. crossing anywhere other than a crosswalk is not jaywalking.

Crossing the road illegally is jaywalking. So 99% of the time, if there is no crosswalk, it is jaywalking.

It's not just as simple as a crosswalk because most states have the concept of an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection which doesn't have signals (otherwise there'd be huge parts of the country where nobody could cross the street without a multi-mile hike):

Arizona: Vehicles must yield the right-of-way to pedestrians within a crosswalk that are in the same half of the roadway as the vehicle or when a pedestrian is approaching closely enough from the opposite side of the roadway to constitute a danger. Pedestrians may not suddenly leave the curb and enter a crosswalk into the path of a moving vehicle that is so close the vehicle is unable to yield. Pedestrians must yield the right-of-way to vehicles when crossing outside of a marked crosswalk or an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection. Where traffic control devices are in operation, pedestrians may only cross between two adjacent intersections in a marked crosswalk.

This just shows that humans can't be trusted as instant backup for a near fully autonomous car.

And I agree, that Uber footage must be purposely dark. If they weren't worried, they'd be showing us footage from the other sensors as well.

They can if they are actually watching the road.

No, human backups really cant be trusted to react in time.

Quote:

from NY TimesBut Google decided to play down the vigilant-human approach after an experiment in 2013, when the company let some of its employees sit behind the wheel of the self-driving cars on their daily commutes. Engineers using onboard video cameras to remotely monitor the results were alarmed by what they observed — a range of distracted-driving behavior that included falling asleep. “We saw stuff that made us a little nervous,” Christopher Urmson, a former Carnegie Mellon University roboticist who directs the car project at Google, said at the time. The experiment convinced the engineers that it might not be possible to have a human driver quickly snap back to “situational awareness,” the reflexive response required for a person to handle a split-second crisis.

did the local council arrange for extra street lighting following the incident, etc.

Because city councils are known for their ability to have dozens of powerful street lamps installed at a moments notice without anyone being aware of it?

The accident happened in the early hours of the morning, didn’t it? Where I live street lights don’t sync perfectly with daylight hours and there’s sometimes a gap where they are switched off before the sun comes up. The incident could have caused them to e.g. change the timers on the lights - or, more likely and as I mentioned, the youtube video was probably shot at a different time of night anyway.

With luminosity being logarithmic, you don’t need “powerful” lighting to make a lot of perceptual difference.

Nope. It happened at 10 pm. All lights were supposed to be on.

Is it in one of those reduce light pollution/save energy areas? This past winter cycling to work in pitch black at 6pm and multiple stretches where all street lights are off for stretches hundreds of meters long not fun to cycle through with people rushing to get home and playing on there mobiles. I saw collisions happen nearly every night.

Not defending UBER here as I do think they cut corners and this shouldn’t have happened, but in regards to the lighting did the independent film makers drive through at the same time as when the accident occurred? I ask because here in Oklahoma in many places we actually shut off all of the road lights after a certain time. For example I know in Tulsa when the budget gets tight we start shutting off the streetlights down the length of I-44, I-75 and the like after say 10-11 pm.

Still think the video looks artificially dark but it may explain the majority of the difference between the videos.

Next step: Police should examine if the poor light conditions on the video where likely to be present at recording time, or were a result of post-processing (which can be easily detected by video forensics tools).

The police needs to know if its post-processing, and Uber needs the rest of world to know if it wasn't. Seems like a classic win-win to me...

Yes finally, the first comment to get at the probable Uber truth here: they doctored the video. For most companies you assume cheap cams, for Uber you have to assume criminal conspiracy, it is the most likely explanation for any Uber related story.

If their actual hardware uses cameras this bad they should just be kicked out of the self driving competition for incompetence.

Honestly, you should never trust any car to see you. If you dont see them stopping then dont walk in front of them. There is a reason why moms say "look both ways" (do they still say that?). Pedestrians should always wait for traffic to pass, regardless of what the law says.

The fact that the human did jaywalk and that's why the car isn't cited doesn't change the fact that this reveals a flaw in the system.

Again, this happened in my backyard, I know the area very well. I actually had an instance a few months ago where a bike hit my car, in a crosswalk he should not have been in. It was not my fault although I got T-Boned by the bike. This did cause me to check out the laws.

I don't know all the details, but I'm confused as to why the person decided that they have the right of way when crossing a street. Was the pedestrian sign green? (and hence the driver's signal would've been red to stop), was there a pedestrian sign? was the pedestrian just jaywalking randomly and expecting the traffic to obey them?

From what little I know here, this still stinks to me like those instances where say highway merging traffic seems to believe they have the right of way. or where something like me stopping suddenly because the car in front of me did the same and causing you to crash into my rear will result in anything different than you being at fault as far as police/insurance is concerned for following too closely.

Maybe I'm just jaded, but I would think if I was walking across a street at night, >I< should be the one looking for headlights (MUCH more visible for a pedestrian), than expecting a headlight to look for me (the illumination aspect of which won't actually reach me in any meaningful way until reaction time on the driver's part is severely limited).

did the local council arrange for extra street lighting following the incident, etc.

Because city councils are known for their ability to have dozens of powerful street lamps installed at a moments notice without anyone being aware of it?

The accident happened in the early hours of the morning, didn’t it? Where I live street lights don’t sync perfectly with daylight hours and there’s sometimes a gap where they are switched off before the sun comes up. The incident could have caused them to e.g. change the timers on the lights - or, more likely and as I mentioned, the youtube video was probably shot at a different time of night anyway.

With luminosity being logarithmic, you don’t need “powerful” lighting to make a lot of perceptual difference.

Nope. It happened at 10 pm. All lights were supposed to be on.

Is it in one of those reduce light pollution/save energy areas? This past winter cycling to work in pitch black at 6pm and multiple stretches where all street lights are off for stretches hundreds of meters long not fun to cycle through with people rushing to get home and playing on there mobiles. I saw collisions happen nearly every night.

Comparing video from multiple uncalibrated cameras in different lighting conditions and then trying to extrapolate what a person could or couldn't see is pointless - there are far to many unknowns to reach any conclusion.

What would be interesting to see is the sensor data from the self-driving system. Was there not enough data to detect the woman crossing the road, did the machine vision fail to detect her, or was there some other failure?

You beat me to the punch.

I will add a couple of items. One, many cameras will auto adjust the exposure, shadows and highlights, this includes many cell cameras. It is not hard to dramatically increase or decrease the brightness of a video by adjusting the exposure. Two, the environment at night makes a HUGE difference in brightness. Things like the moon being out, the phase of the moon, other lights (cars, buildings, even distant lights), humidity and cloud cover all effect brightness.

This is one area that human observation would trump cameras.

I'm not saying that it was or was not dark, just that it is hard to determine that from videos of the area.

I'd like to see how those pedways in the median are supposed to be accessed without "jaywalking".

jaywalking is going from oppoaite corner to corner at an intersection, not following the crosswalks that run parallel to the streets. crossing anywhere other than a crosswalk is not jaywalking.

Don't make universal statements like that you are almost always going to be wrong in a country like the US where there are countless different state and local definitions.

In fact you are wrong. In AZ crossing the street not at a crosswalk is jaywalking.

like to see pedestrians walk miles and miles extra every day just to cross at cross walks. and jaywalking was named directly after the shape it makes when you cross an intersection like this.

don't make ignorant statements that assume every person that ever crossed a road is a criminal. dip shit.

i rarely ever see anyone cross in a crosswalk because all of the idiots i see in cars don't know what the fuck a stop line is or how to use it so there is literally no way for a pedestrian to cross the street legally because cars are parked on the cross walk.

you seem to have a hard time applying common sense and logic to something as simple AS WALKING. good job.

I have to call shenanigans. The only place I ever cross without a crosswalk is on a road with a stop sign on either side. In California as in Arizona, that is not jaywalking. However, when I cross there, I wait and yield to all approaching cars no matter how long it takes.

When I walk other places, I specifically choose routes that cross the street the least and always cross in crosswalks. It's not hard and in addition, this country has an obesity epidemic so it's probably good if everybody did this.

Not defending UBER here as I do think they cut corners and this shouldn’t have happened, but in regards to the lighting did the independent film makers drive through at the same time as when the accident occurred? I ask because here in Oklahoma in many places we actually shut off all of the road lights after a certain time. For example I know in Tulsa when the budget gets tight we start shutting off the streetlights down the length of I-44, I-75 and the like after say 10-11 pm.

Still think the video looks artificially dark but it may explain the majority of the difference between the videos.

You can tell in the dark Uber dashcam video the street lights are on. They are clearly visible. Uber just has the dynamic range cranked down so hard that anything short of the center of the headlight beam is crushed into pure black.